This invention relates to a cooler for canned drinks of a type which enables the drinks to be readily carried, maintained in a cool condition and readily removed from the container while any remaining drinks are maintained cooled.
Various containers for drinks have been provided and to enable storage of the drinks in a convenient container of minimum dimension, for example in a golf bag, the container is in many cases shaped as a cylindrical sleeve with the drinks in canned or bottled form stacked axially along the length of the container.
Examples of this type of container are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,717,282 (Nordskog), 4,516,409 (Hobbes), 3,263,806 (Ring) and 4,193,525.
The Nordskog patent relates to a container of this sort which includes a spring forcing the cans upwardly toward one end of the container together with a latching arrangement which releases one can at a time. The device however has no provision for cooling of the drinks or for maintaining the drinks in a cooled condition.
Ring discloses an arrangement in which the cylindrical container includes a peripheral wall the major portion of the thickness of which is made up of an insulating material such as expanded polystyrene beads. Such a container is however relatively bulky, complex and expensive to manufacture and merely relies on an insulating effect to maintain the drinks in a cooled condition.
Hobbs discloses a cylindrical container which is specially molded and formed so as to define spaced parallel walls of the container. Such a container is again extremely expensive to manufacture in view of the very large and complex molding arrangements which are necessary and hence cannot be made available at a low cost. Hobbs mentions that chambers can be defined in the wall of the container by a generally cylindrical inner side wall and an outer side wall with a refrigerant being inserted into the chamber. It further states that one more of the container sections can be placed in a conventional refrigerator to reduce the temperature of the refrigerant material.
This device therefore applies an additional cooling effect to the contained drinks but requires a highly complex part to be manufactured and in addition the part is relatively large in size when inserted into the freezer for cooling.